Value Line, Inc. Aktie

Good morning. Welcome to the 2025 Annual Meeting of Shareholders of Value Line, Inc. We appreciate your participation. What we're going to do today is first go through the formal business of the meeting, including a quorum call and election. I'll then make some very brief comments about our business and sort of the state of the company. And finally, we've received a couple of questions in advance through the e-mail address that was given, and I'll be happy to answer those. So first, as I said, we'll begin the formalities of the October 7, 2025 Annual Meeting of Shareholders of Value Line, Inc. All right. Will the meeting please come to order?

Good morning. My name is Howard Brecher, I'm the Chairman of the Board and the CEO with Value Line. It's a pleasure to welcome you to the Annual Meeting of Shareholders. The purpose of this meeting as set forth in the notice of meeting, which you have all received, and that includes the quorum call and the election of directors for the coming year. At this meeting, Stephen Anastasio, Vice President, will act as Secretary of this annual meeting.

Mr. Anastasio, will you kindly present the proof of the due calling of the meeting?

I present the following: a copy of the printed notice. Sure, Howard. Thank you for the introduction. I present the following at the annual meeting, a copy of the printed notice of meeting dated August 20, 2025, setting forth the time, place and purpose of the meeting. A complete list, which are at the desk of the inspector of election of the holders of the common stock of the company as of the close of business on August 12, 2025, the record date fixed by the Board of Directors for shareholders entitled to notice of and to vote at this meeting, which list show that 9,409, 022 shares of common stock were then outstanding and entitled to vote at this meeting.

An affidavit of Domenick Vacca, employee of Equiniti Trust Company, LLC, the company's transfer agent and successor to AST, showing that on August 27, 2025, Domenick Vacca called to be mailed the notice of Internet availability of proxy materials, including the notice of meeting, proxy statement, form of proxy, annual report and proxy cards to each shareholder of record on the record date.

Thank you, Steve. A copy of the printed notice and the affidavit of mailing will be retained with the records of the company. Now pursuant to the authority vested by statute, I appoint Tamara Cajuste and Stephen Anastasio as inspectors of election. The inspectors have executed an oath of office, which will also be filed in the minute book of the company. Next, I ask that the inspectors take a poll of the stock represented at this meeting in person or by proxy and that they present their report, including the presence of a quorum.

So is there anyone present who wishes to present the proxy?

Hearing none, the inspectors have now indicated to me in writing that there are present in person or by proxy at this meeting, the holders of record as of the close of business August 12 of a majority of the outstanding shares of the common stock of the company as required for a valid meeting. By reason of the fact that the holders of a majority of issued and outstanding shares of common stock of the company are present in person or by proxy, a quorum is present, and the meeting can now proceed to the transaction of the business for which it has been convened pursuant to the formal notice.

The meeting thus will proceed to the election of directors for the ensuing year. Now the following persons are candidates for director as set forth in the proxy statement: Howard A. Brecher, Stephen R. Anastasio, Mary Bernstein, Alfred R. Fiore, Stephen P. Davis, Glenn J. Muenzer. The Chair will now entertain a motion that nominations be closed. Is there such a motion?

I motion that the nominations be closed.

Thank you. Hearing no objection, I'll read for the record that shareholders who have sent in their proxy forms will have their votes cast by the proxies pursuant to the shareholders' instructions. Will the inspectors take the ballots and act as tellers. Have all who desired to vote done so? Hearing none, the polls are closed. The certificate of the inspectors of election, which shall be filed with the records of this meeting, indicates the presence of a quorum for conduct of the business of the meeting as we said.

Also, as required by law, the inspectors of election will examine the ballots count the votes cast and will make their report as soon as practicable. Thereafter, the management of the company will file with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the SEC, a Form 8-K as required by law, including the exact count of the votes cast. We have now concluded the transaction of the business specified in the notice of meeting. Therefore, may I request a motion to adjourn.

I make a motion to adjourn the meeting.

All those in favor, please say yes.

Yes.

Thank you. The meeting is adjourned. And now as I said, I'll briefly discuss some major developments within the business in 2025 and try to answer your questions. Your company had an excellent year in fiscal 2025, the 12 months ending April 30, 2025. Shareholders' dividends were increased for the 11th consecutive year, and we're very proud of that.

Meanwhile, the company earned net income of $20,686, million, translating to $2.20 per share, up 8.8% from fiscal 2024 to fiscal 2025. Notably, on the earnings streams are some earnings from EAM, the investment adviser to the Value Line Mutual Fund. Those totaled $18.318 million, which grew by more than $5 million, up 38% from last year.

Retained earnings rose again, up by more than $9.1 million or 8.8%, strengthening our hand as a business and representing an increase of 8.8%, now totaling $113.4 million as of April 30, 2025, the highest level of retained earnings in the past 2 decades. The outsourcing of our distribution operations to United States domestic suppliers has been successful and continues to represent a cost saving as well as a reliable way of serving our customers. Lastly, income from securities transactions of $3.238 million reached a new record high in well over a decade. exceeding the prior year's income of $2.764 million by more than 17% on investment income or securities income.

Touching on just a couple of our sales and marketing initiatives. On the individual investor front of our publishing business, we have continued advertising at a higher volume as results have been good in a steadily rising stock market. We continually expand the use of artificial intelligence and other advanced computing techniques to model and then target our advertising more effectively and to raise the yield or the percent of positive response on our advertising dollars. We also carefully experiment with some of our price points, particularly as we seek multiyear subscriptions, which really tend to give our customers a chance to get to know us and tend to bind them to us as long-term customers.

Now on the defensive front, you might say, let me talk about our information technology provisions. We run on information or information company day in and day out. Taking that into account, we are continually investing in, updating and redesigning, especially our software systems for greater efficiency and reliability and security. This includes being quite far along in replacing our older legacy systems, which we have a group of -- and -- looking ahead, we -- you might say we got ahead of the curve and have already replaced all of our employees' work computers with high-quality Windows 11 units, offering the greatest practical security available.

We also have performed this fiscal year professional scans and tests of the security of our systems. Finally, as I've stated before, the company hosts or operates our actual computers, our IT equipment and multiple secure data centers through a highly reputable and stable provider of such services. They call it colocation or multiple location systems. Let me touch on some financial highlights. As I said, the business is very strong, as the resources to grow and to prosper through any bumps in the road. We're exceptionally strong in terms of balance sheet numbers, cash flow and all aspects of financial strength. That gives us the flexibility we need.

Retained earnings grew during the year by 8.8% to more than $113 million on April 30, 2025, a record high for retained earnings over the last 2 decades. Liquid assets, similar definition of working capital, which is the older phrase, liquid assets exceeded $77.4 million at year-end, a more than 13% increase in 1 year. And as shareholders who have been with us know very well, over $20 million in dividends have been paid to our shareholders over the past 2 years.

So in conclusion, a high-quality management and employee team has brought us to continuing success even in the face of persistent high interest rates, which have been a challenge, not because we borrow, but because of its impact on customers and on some aspects of the stock market. Your management very much appreciates the support of our shareholders, employees and partners, which has enabled us to have another successful year and increase our dividends for that 11th straight time.

A couple of questions were received in advance of this meeting, and I'm happy to answer them briefly. First question we got is, what is management's view of the economic outlook and its effect on the company? The economy in the United States, where we do some 98% of our business has generally been expanding for quite some time. However, we expect expansion to continue nevertheless for the next year or more. As always, there are areas for concern, aren't there always. That includes an unemployment rate that is creeping up and what you might call softer areas of the economy such as manufacturing and homebuilding.

To address these areas of softness, we think the Federal Reserve is taking timely policy action. Stock market conditions with most indexes hitting new highs again, hit them again yesterday, have also overall been a positive for your company. The timeliness ranking system is there to predict growth and has continued to do well. Also, you have Asset Management, which operates the Value on mutual funds established by this company in 1950, is considered a growth-oriented fund adviser.

And so it's done very well in this growth-oriented market, we're happy to say. Now our copyright clients, which are really dominated by a dividend-oriented fund, have lagged a bit. But we believe that with their solid safety and earnings orientation, they should eventually recover, especially if interest rates continue to fall as they're beginning to do now. Finally, everyone is talking about tariffs, but higher tariffs have had relatively little impact on our profitability and thus far have not been a disruption to the supply chain, but we do try to plan ahead on that by diversifying our supply sources.

Next question we received from shareholders. What are the Board's plans for buying back stock? Like other companies, we have pretty steadily been in the market to buy back stock at a generally moderate level of activity. The repurchase program adopted a couple of years ago by the company remains in effect. Our Board considers its stance in this regard periodically. So those are the questions that we had and my brief summary of our financial position. We very much appreciate your voting and participating in this meeting, and we thank you very much for attending. Have a good day. The meeting is adjourned, as we've said. Good day.